Inside the foreign call centres
13 April 2012
- Worldwide, at the end of last year 110,000 people were working in call centres outsourced from one country to another. This is set to rise to 241,000 by 2007, according to analysts Datamonitor.
- 63,000 of those jobs were in India. This is forecast to climb to 121,000 by 2007.
- Centres in Malaysia and the Philippines are also becoming popular.
- Jobs in IT, financial services, insurance, legal support, human resources and medical secretarial work have also been moved abroad.
- Norwich Union group Aviva was among the first to set up call centres in India in 2002.
- Prudential unveiled a call centre in Mumbai and moved one third of its 3,000 UK-based customer service jobs.
- In October last year HSBC moved 4,000 British jobs to India.
- Barclays have signed a deal with unions paving the way for more outsourcing in India. The firm already has 500 posts there.
- In February it was announced half of all calls to National Rail Enquiries will be handled in India under a £100 million contract awarded to BT and Ventura.
- Some firms have pledged not to move work abroad, including Alliance & Leicester, Legal & General and the Co-op.
